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Notes from TechEd Day 1

Wow. The rumors were true. The question of the day is who would buy a PowerPC Macintosh after Steve announced the switch to x86 chips from Intel?

I would.

Why? Because yesterday when we left for Orlando we had two Mac Minis packed in our luggage, specially prepared for giving great demos of Allerton here at TechEd. When we arrived and got our bags, they were gone. Some baggage handler in Atlanta stole our computers.

I don't have a heckuva lot of experience being the victim of a theft, so this was kind of a shock. The response from our airline was even more shocking. She rolled her eyes and said, "Yeah, the baggage people at Atlanta airport do this all the time." She was apologetic, but completely unsurprised.

So there you have it. We planned to spend today giving a really excellent demo of the Allerton client running on Mac OS X and talking to Team Foundation Server. Instead, we spent the day standing in the Allerton booth and telling people that the dog ate our homework. It was really embarrassing.

Meanwhile, back at SourceGear world headquarters in Champaign, the folks there bought another Mac Mini, configured it and shipped it by FedEx for early delivery on Tuesday. The show must go on.

I suppose I will always remember this day. We bought a Mac Mini on the same day that Steve Jobs obsoleted the PowerPC.

Last night at the airport (around 1am, since our plane was really late), we saw Korby Parnell and Rob Caron hanging around the baggage claim area. Their bags were locked in a room with glass walls. They could see them, but they could not have them. They tried for quite a while to call somebody to unlock that door, but nobody came. At the time, they seemed to be winning the competition for whose plight was the most pathetic. I'm pretty sure we've got the lead now.